


Served Cold

by Jemisard



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, Non-Consensual Filming, Original Character(s), Pre-Relationship, Sex Tapes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 18:52:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16331612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jemisard/pseuds/Jemisard
Summary: A run in with one of Todd's ex-boyfriends leads to Dirk learning things neither he nor Todd ever wanted him to know. And a bit of necessary payback against said ex.This story contains semi-graphic sex acts being unknowingly filmed and unintentionally witnessed. Be warned.





	Served Cold

"Toddy!"

Dirk got to watch the way that Todd's face went through emotions, starting with annoyance, moving into frustration and indignation and then smoothing out to something fairly close to neutral with a stronger than usual undercurrent of anger. "Eliot."

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

Todd's face didn't say 'friend', but Todd's face could be incredibly deceptive about Todd's actual feelings towards things.

"Hiiii," Dirk cut in. "I'm Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective, Todd works with me at my agency."

Eliot's mouth smiled, but his eyes were cold and sharp. Dirk had an unpleasant feeling in his spine, the same one he had had meeting Gordon Rimmer. Dirk thought that Bart wouldn't like this man much. "Dick Gently?"

"No..." Dirk forced his smile to stay in place. " _Dirk_. It's a full name, not a diminutive like 'Dick' is for Richard."

"Right." Eliot visibly dismissed Dirk, turning back to Todd. "Been a while, hasn't it?"

"Not long enough," Todd grumbled. 

"I see the Hot Toddy has cooled a lot," Eliot laughed.

"... Hot Toddy?"

"Don't call me that," Todd snapped. "My name's Todd. I'm not a college student anymore."

"No, you're really not. You had such a baby face, you're all sharp angles now. Not so much the Hot Toddy and just sort of... Lukewarm Toddy."

Dirk didn't like this guy. The bad feeling in his spine was heavy on his jaw now. "Look, usually I'm all for meeting Todd's friends, but you're clearly not actually a friend and you're being unpleasant, so maybe you could leave us to have our drink in peace?"

"Well, you're quite the upper class Limey, aren't you?"

"Hey!"

Sure enough, while Todd might put up with someone being unpleasant to him if they had a past connection, he wouldn't tolerate someone being nasty to Dirk with no real provocation.

"Back off, Eliot. Now." Todd's hand slipped into his pocket and Dirk reached out to grab his wrist, recognising that gesture.

"Todd. He's not worth it." He tugged softly and tried pleading with his face.

Eliot laughed. It was a singularly unpleasant sound. "Yeah, _Toddler_ , do what Dicky-boy says. He know how good you are are listening to requests?"

Todd's hand jerked forward against Dirk's, making Dirk hold on tighter. "I'm not making nice with you, _Elly_. Get fucked."

"If you aren't leaving, then we will." Dirk stood up, keeping a firm hold of Todd's wrist. He threw down a note to cover their drinks and started for the door, dragging Todd with him. Trusting that Todd would rather come with him than stand and fight with the odious Eliot.

Todd followed after him, glancing back, btu when they got outside, his hand came from his pocket without the brass knuckles. "I haven't seen him since... before Mexican Funeral formed."

"Oh. Wow. He made it sound like you were friends until recently." Dirk still kept hold of Todd's wrist, because Todd hadn't made him let go.

"No. I thought he'd dropped off the face of the planet. Hoped. Creep." His head was doing the sort of low, angry and ashamed thing. "We dated. For like, two or three months in my first year of college."

"You? Dated him?" Dirk had never attributed such truly terrible taste to Todd before.

"He wasn't like that. Or- no, he wasn't. He was a jerk, but he did a way better job of hiding it. And I wasn't confident with people." Todd shook his head. "Forget about it. He lives in New York, he must be here just on a trip."

"Mm." Dirk saw a sign for an Irish pub and thought that sounded like an amazing idea. "Let's go in here. I could go a Guiness."

"What? Oh, okay. I guess." Todd followed after him and Dirk promptly forgot about the dreadful Eliot.

#

The envelope was a standard, business type, went through the mail envelope. It was addressed to Dirk Gently, Holistic detective and had nothing inside but a flash drive.

Dirk turned the flashdrive in his fingers. Normally, he felt a surge of anticipation at the start of a case, a flush of excitement as the universe started to click into place for him, that weight of impending unraveling and reweaving into something that made sense.

He felt anxious. He had a weight in his gut that made him feel nauseous and the flashdrive was impossibly heavy in his hand.

He wondered if this is what it would feel like for Bart to try and kill someone who wasn't meant to be dead. But there wasn't any panic or _wrongness_ to it, it wasn't like this was something wholly wrong. Just... not a case. Not something good, but not something fundamentally not right.

Dirk took a steadying breath and plugged in the flashdrive. It loaded up and opened.

One file. Labelled as 'Dirk Gently URGENT!!!'.

Well, if it was urgent, he should probably stop staring at it like it might explode into violence at any second. Because it wouldn't. It was a computer file.

A movie file, actually. 

He double clicked the file and it opened up. It was a darkened room, focused on the bed and-

Dirk turned the monitor off in a panic, slapping a hand over his mouth and looking around the office.

Todd and Farah were out, doing whatever things they did to 'keep the agency running smoothly and not running out of stuff'. He knew that, but he still felt terribly shamed at having had _that_ pop up on the computer screen.

He wasn't sure what was 'urgent' or even 'case' about a man being orally pleasured by someone. He hadn't seen more, he didn't want to see more than that.

But it said _urgent_.

Dirk whined softly to himself and spun on his chair, which didn't actually help, but the movement was a bit soothing. A bit. Not as much as he'd like.

He couldn't make Farah or Todd watch. That was beyond inappropriate and it was addressed to him. Whoever it was probably didn't want more people than necessary viewing it, given the, well, _intimate_ nature of the encounter.

Slowly, reluctantly, he turned the monitor back on.

The monitor being turned off hadn't stopped the video from running. Because of the camera angle, the young personage (young man?) providing the pleasure was still not clearly visible, and the hands twisted in his (?) short hair did nothing to help.

_"Yeah, that's it, you're such a hungry little slut for it."_

The words made Dirk startle. He wasn't innocent, he knew some people enjoyed saying such things and some people enjoyed hearing them but the tone hadn't been a very pleasant one. An almost familiarly unpleasant one.

And the person the words were directed at seemed uncomfortable too, making a noise that didn't say 'sexy' to Dirk. It was more like a whine or whimper of unhappiness. Dirk had made similar noises a lot in Blackwing, though never in _this_ sort of circumstances.

_"Come on, slut, you want more down your throat than that."_

_That_ whimper definitely suggested that no, they did not, and Dirk didn't want to keep watching, or listening, but if he turned off the sound, he might miss whatever he was meant to get from this recording. Whatever it was that was so important it was marked 'urgent', with _three_ exclamation marks.

And the man being pleasured pulled his partner down by the grip on their hair, pushing them to take more than they really seemed to want to.

Dirk hit the space bar to pause it, scotting back from the desk and turning his chair away from the view. That didn't help enough, so he tucked his knees to his chest, heels on the edge of the seat and hugged his legs tightly.

He didn't know if this was pre-planned. If the person providing the pleasure had agreed to being manhandled and pushed like that and Dirk was intensely uncomfortable with the idea that he was witnessing a consensual sexual encounter and the thought that it might _not_ be consensual...

The small whimper was almost the same distressed sound as he had heard on the recording, but he was making it this time. He buried his face in his knees and breathed.

"Dirk?"

He looked up, managing a watery smile. "Hello, Mona. Where were you?"

"On Farah's desk. She likes talking to me, even though she doesn't know it's me." She pointed at Farah's desk and sure enough, Farah's solar powered bobbing sunflower wasn't there.

"Fair enough. What's prompted you-?"

"You were upset. Having talking parts and hugging parts makes it easier to help when you're upset." 

"That's very nice of you, thank you. I don't know if I want a hug yet. I'm just finding this video very uncomfortable to watch, but it's marked urgent and sent to me, so I need to watch it."

"Because it might be a case." Mona nodded and Dirk always loved talking to her, because she understood, she didn't ask silly questions or try and dissuade him from doing what he needed to.

"All right, I do want a hug now," he decided aloud. He uncurled from his cramped position to give Mona a firm hug.

Her thin arms wrapped around his shoulders, stepping in between his legs for their cuddle. "Do you want me to sit with you? I'll even stay like this if it will help."

"Could you be something I can hug? I think it might be easier with you here, but I don't want more people seeing this than necessary. It's- very intimate. And possibly, not very healthy."

Mona's face twisted a bit, discomfort and maybe processing it all. "That doesn't sound very nice. I'll be something nice, to help."

The big, plush octopus toy made Dirk giggle softly. He tucked the soft tentacles around him like a hug (they stayed and squeezed ever so softly, which as even nicer) and he hugged the big round head tightly to his chest. Monda had chosen a lovely pastel yellow to be and she had a vague scent of berries when he squished her.

"You're so good to me," he murmured to her. "And you make _excellent_ choices of cuddle toys."

There was no reply, which was the expected thing, and Dirk took a deep breath and let it out before reaching over to click the spacebar again.

The action resumed, but with the unhappy partner tapping three times, then doing it again, until the hands let go. Dirk gave a heavy exhale of relief that there was some kind of safety net in place.

 _"I thought you said you wanted to do I wanted?"_

His partner looked up, big blue eyes more vivid for the red rims and wet marks on his cheeks and Dirk thought he was going to throw up.

 _"I thought you'd want to avoid me throwing up on your cock, Elly,"_ the baby faced Todd in the video said.

#

Locking himself in the bathroom was not the most adult reaction Dirk had ever had to anything, but it was away from the office and the computer and everyone else.

Mona crouched down in front of him again. He'd brought her in with him when he finished the video, ejected it and tucked it in his pocket and she'd been turning back to her human self periodically to give him water to rinse his mouth or to rub his back while he threw up.

Dirk looked up at her and gave her a watery smile. "Thanks."

"I'm not sure that staying in here until you forget what you saw is actually going to work."

She had a very valid point there. "I will need a lot of alcohol to forget."

"I still don't think it will actually make you forget." She sat on the edge of the bath, hand stroking Dirk's back. "Was it a case?"

"I don't think it was. I- I don't know why it was sent to me. I should've listened to my instinct to not watch it, I had a feeling, it was a bad feeling, but not a 'going against a case' feeling, so I thought I should, because it was marked 'urgent'."

"But it wasn't a case. And it's made you feel terrible." She sat on the floor with him. "I didn't watch or listen. I was careful."

"I know. You're super good, Mona." He leaned over into her. "I saw one of my friends doing something very private and intimate and I don't think they knew they were being recorded and they were doing things they probably wouldn't want me to know they did..."

Mona hugged him, so his shoulder poked into her sternum and her chin rested on his shoulder. "Someone sent it to you and labelled it so you'd watch it. To upset you."

"You think?" He wasn't sure. "I think the man who sent it is the one we ran into the other day. He was very unpleasant."

"Was he cruel?"

At that point? Not exactly. "I think he could be," Dirk admitted. "No. I know he can be, I saw what he did in that video."

The sharp slap of hand on cheek, the shocked silence followed by the larger man using his size and weight against the young, helplessly innocent looking Todd in the film.

Dirk heaved again, but he had already thrown up everything he could.

There had been no 'no', but the unhappy, pained noises and the tear streaks had said that it wasn't an enthusiastic 'yes'.

He wiped his face with the cloth Mona offered, the damp nice and cool on his flushed cheeks and brow.

"Did he want to hurt Todd?"

Dirk looked at her, eyes wide, then realised she meant by sending the video. "I didn't say it was Todd."

"You didn't need to." She stroked his face with her hand. "Did he send it to you to hurt Todd?"

"Probably. Or to make things awkward between us. Because I've seen something I didn't want to and I won't be able to hide it from Todd and I don't think I should, he has a right to know what I saw and that his ex-boyfriend sent it to me, because I don't think Todd knew he was recorded, which is a whole other-" He caught the 'urp' of air bubbles before he went into dry heaves.

Mona resumed petting his head. "The ex-boyfriend sounds really awful."

Dirk snorted. "Yes. He is."

"Why did Todd date someone awful, let alone have sex with him?"

"I don't know." It wasn't like the Todd he knew now, angry at himself and expecting that he deserved nothing nice. That Todd hadn't been through all those experiences, hadn't carved bits out of himself with his actions and choices.

"Are you going to ask him?"

"Well, I'm not intending on it, but I'll probably end up doing it anyway. You know how I am."

Her soft hum of agreement wasn't reassuring, but it was at least honest.

#

Dirk managed to avoid Todd and Farah for a little while by going back to his apartment and leaving them a note saying he wasn't feeling well and had called it a day. And not to worry, Mona was with him.

He left the note on Farah's desk under her _actual_ solar powered sunflower—which Mona had tucked away to replace at some point—and gone to have a proper shower and some sweet tea in his own place, dozing on the couch with a blanket and Mona-the-octopus-plushie.

He knew it was just buying breathing space, because he knew Todd would come and check on him eventually, probably determined to try and feed him and make him go to bed early and other nonsense that Todd seemed to think was vital to recovering from sickness.

Sure enough, there was eventually a knock on the door. Dirk paused his movie. "It's unlocked, Todd."

Todd opened the door, coming in with a large, steaming bowl. "Farah said I should try making something British for you, so I went for a rice pudding that seemed fairly easy."

Dirk felt his bottom lip wibble. "You, did?"

"If you dare cry at me, I'm taking it away again," Todd threatened. And then completely undid the effect by setting it in front of Dirk with a spoon. "You need more tea?"

"No, thank you." It wasn't the most amazing rice pudding technically, but the first spoonful was the best thing he'd had before, because _Todd_ made it just for _him_.

"Farah said you feel sick?"

Dirk nodded. "Yes, but not like, fever and flu sick. I was sent a video file and it was marked urgent with _three_ exclamation marks, but watching it made me feel sick and I threw up and wanted to just have a lie down."

"And the octopus?"

"Oh, that's Mona."

"Oh. Hey, Mona. Thanks for looking after Dirk." Todd sat down next to Dirk and patted a fluffy tentacle. "What was the video?"

And there was that question that Dirk had been dreading. "Okay, I'm going to explain what it was, but you have to let me finish and not get angry and yell at me part way through, because I really did think it might be a case or important, or something that I needed to see, even though, in hindsight, I can recognise that I should've have realised sooner that I should have turned it off."

Todd's expression was a mix between annoyed and worried that was coming across as Todd usual level of emotional constipation. "Is this worse than the time loop reveal?"

"Oh. No. Nothing like that." Dirk shook his head.

"All right." Todd's face got less angry and more worried. "Must've been pretty bad to make you feel sick."

"It was a home made sex tape," Dirk blurted out. "And it- I don't think one of them knew. About the camera. And it was rough and it said _urgent_."

"Hey. No, so long as you don't share it or anything, you haven't done anything wrong, Dirk, okay?" Todd curled a hand on Dirk's forearm. "You kept watching because you thought there was going to be something important, but there wasn't?"

Dirk nodded, feeling better and more miserable at once. He didn't like it at all.

"I'm not getting why you're so upset, Dirk." Todd's statement sounded a lot like a question and Dirk knew what the real question was.

Dirk took a deep breath and closed his eyes, letting it out and turning to face Todd. "It was you. It was you and that awful Eliot."

A heartbeat of silence passed between them.

Then another.

A third.

"I'm going to fucking kill that mother fucker," Todd stated, terribly calm and matter of fact about it.

#

Dirk had been required to hand over the flashdrive with the video and then let Todd go to the bathroom to watch the video on his phone.

He hugged Mona while Todd watched the video, possibly twice, or maybe just once but he needed a few minutes to put himself into a state he was willing to be in with Dirk.

Todd did eventually come out, sitting himself on the ottoman Dirk had acquired. "You watched all of it?"

"Sort of? I mean, don't get angry, once I realised it was you, I sort of fast forward skimmed through it, because I kept thinking someone wanted me to see something important but it wasn't until it ended that I realised actually, no, they just sent it to me to be cruel." Dirk knew he was bright red. He thought Todd would've been red if he wasn't white with shock.

Dirk assumed it was shock. Maybe it was something else. Anger was usually red. Horror was white, and tangentially related to shock.

"Fuck," Todd breathed out. Then pointed at Dirk. "Not like that."

"No, I know. Time and place for joking." Even Dirk could recognise that, thought he had the deep instinct to try and lighten the mood with jokes. This wasn't that sort of mood. This was very personal and hurtful and probably a bit humiliating for Todd.

"This is the only copy you got?"

"Definitely."

"Still set on me not killing him?"

"Afraid so, I simply wouldn't survive in prison and I'm definitely not letting you go in on your own." He gave Todd a soft, tentative smile.

Todd huffed and looked down at his hands, turning the flashdrive over and over. 

"Could you go to the police?"

"I don't know. I was legal, we were dating, I didn't tell him 'no'."

"You didn't know you were being filmed!"

"I don't want to have to show this to other people, Dirk." Todd sounded tired rather than angry. "It's bad enough knowing he has it and that you've seen it. I don't want a bunch of officers seeing it, people we might have to work with on cases." The pallid tone was vanishing as Todd slowly turned red, cheeks burning with humiliation.

"I'm sure he seemed like a reasonable enough human to date at some point, you shouldn't be ashamed of having had sex with him when you were young and silly," Dirk heard himself quip.

Todd's head snapped up, eyes comically wide.

Dirk's eyes went wide in response as he realised what he'd said. Horror welled up in his throat like bile and he started to apologise-

And Todd laughed.

It wasn't entirely a good laugh; it was a touch hysterical and a little choked, but Todd didn't look shocked and Dirk felt less horrified at himself.

And when Todd sort of folded over and started to make a noise suspiciously more like crying that laughing, Dirk tugged him onto the couch and gave him Mona and hugged him until he settled and seemed to feel well enough to fall into a restless, exhausted sleep curled in the corner of the couch.

And Dirk...

Dirk _schemed_ for a way to get back at Eliot that wouldn't cause Todd any further distress.

The first part was making sure that Todd understood that what Dirk had seen didn't change their friendship. Had it changed how Dirk felt about Todd? Of course it had. He had seen things that he would never forget, and he felt terribly conflicted about the treatment he had witnessed, reassessing his belief about how long Todd had been passive aggressively self loathing. He knew far too much about Todd's sexual tastes as a young man and the faces and noises he made to not have his feeling change somewhat.

But that didn't change their relationship. Todd was still Todd, who hated mornings twice as much before coffee as after and still hated it after that. Who bitched and grumbled about doing paperwork and accounts, but always got them done before Dirk really had to worry about it. Who worked out how to make a decent cup of tea and even bought a kettle to do so.

Todd woke up on the couch to Dirk putting down coffee for him. They ate the rice pudding from the night before for breakfast and went to work and chatted with Farah and passed the day in as normal a fashion as they ever did.

Todd was a bit on edge, of course he was, but when one day became another became a week, he seemed to realise that Dirk wasn't going to make him talk about it and wasn't going to treat him differently. Dirk felt like he often didn't give much to their friendship for all Todd gave him; it was a wonderful feeling to be able to give Todd something, a bit of support.

And he carefully, quietly, arranged some pay back and, hopefully, the destruction of the video that had sparked all this.

#

"I have a gift for you!"

Todd gave Dirk a suspicious look.

"Oh, don't be like that, you'll like this." He handed Todd the flash drive. "No nasty surprises, just a present."

Todd's expression said he still didn't trust this, but he was willing to go along with it, taking the flashdrive and plugging it in.

The single file (which Dirk had already watched) was labelled 'Cold Served', which was a reference Dirk didn't entirely get but Todd was clearly clued in to.

The video showed an apartment building, filmed by a camera phone. " _And here we see the residence of one 'douche guzzler will never fuck with one of us again', prior to the enactment of cold, sweet revenge._ "

"Amanda," Todd breathed out. The way his face lit up, realising that _Amanda_ was in on getting some revenge, wanted pay back to protect her big brother, all of this was worth it just for that expression on Todd's face.

" _So, I don't know exactly why this is necessary, but with just the little information I got, this is for a lot of people who have been fucked over by this guy. I'm going to lock baby away to pick up for the after shots!_ "

There was the start of echoing howls on the recording before it went black and then picked up again.

They were inside the ruins of an apartment. Gripps was working at making a hole big enough for the coffee table to fit through in the wall. Beastie was swinging from exposed cables on the ceiling, whooping and giggling while Vogel tried to throw popcorn into her mouth.

Cross was systematically stacking every last piece of crockery he could find into a large stack. In the background, Martin appeared to be standing on the toppled fridge, alternating between drinking his beer and setting into the fridge with a sledgehammer.

" _And here is our after! We've done some remodelling, say hi, boys!_ "

" _Hi boys!_ " Cross, Gripps and Vogel screamed. 

" _And we found his home computer and his video library, and it turns out, Gripps can make a wicked strong electro-magnet out of the bits and pieces from a junkyard! So if it had electronics and was in this place, it's been wiped beyond any hope of redemption. You're welcome and I hope you feel better about this douche bag still existing, because if you're not, Martin says he knows how to dispose of a body so no one will ever find it._ " Amanda turned the phone around and made a kissy face. " _No one fucks with my big brother without my say so. Give me love to Farah, she's cooler than either of you will ever be._ "

The video cut off and Todd ejected the drive, taking it out and holding it. "You set the Rowdies on him."

"Nooo, I set _your sister_ on him. I told her that he had done some awful things to you that made me feel sick to think about and that he liked recording people without their knowledge, like those terrible upskirt people do. And she went dark and quiet and said she'd take care of it. So technically, Amanda set the Rowdies on him, because I told her a little of what he did." Because Dirk wanted Eliot to pay, in some small way, for what he had done to Todd. But he didn't want Todd to get arrested and he knew he wasn't capable of a really good revenge plan.

And he had been so busy explaining his logic that he missed the clues and was caught surprised when Todd hugged him, tight and firm and lovely. Dirk hugged him back, taking a deep breath and sighing it out to relax into the embrace.

"Thanks, Dirk." Todd's voice was slightly rough. "For not asking. For not treating me any different. For setting my fucking _sister_ and her gang of lunatics on him. Just... all of it. Thanks."

Dirk tilted his face down, lips resting on the top of Todd's head. "You're most welcome, Todd. You are always welcome."


End file.
